


Day 31 - Experiment, Whipped, Left for Dead

by fanfictiongreenirises



Series: Whumptober 2020 [31]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Experimentation, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Kidnapping, Needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27303793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfictiongreenirises/pseuds/fanfictiongreenirises
Summary: Bruce finds Dick left on the streets, two weeks after he went missing.No 31. TODAY’S SPECIAL: TORTUREExperiment | Whipped | Left for Dead
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Series: Whumptober 2020 [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947217
Comments: 47
Kudos: 152





	Day 31 - Experiment, Whipped, Left for Dead

**Author's Note:**

> LAST WHUMPTOBER FIC!!!!! I HAVE??? DEFEATED??? THE BEAST??? ~~and literally just in time for exams to begin too 🙃~~
> 
> This is my first time trying Whumptober and I didn't expect to be finishing it but I guess the completionist in me really jumped out lmao. Thank you everyone who's been reading my WT fics this month!! All your love and support (and screams) have been massive in keeping me motivated. 
> 
> And shoutout to the Batfam discord server, because I definitely wouldn't have finished this without you all <3<3<3
> 
> Warnings: blood, many injuries, implied/referenced whipping, needles, experiments, please read the tags and warnings as well
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own DC ^~^

THIS FANFICTION IS HOSTED ON **ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN** , WHERE YOU CAN READ IT FOR **FREE**. IF YOU’RE READING THIS ON A DIFFERENT WEBSITE, IT WAS POSTED THERE **WITHOUT** THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT.

“Not that one.”

“Doctor?”

“I _said_ , Not. That. One. Do I make myself clear?”

The sound of something crashing. He barely stirs.

“You said the blue one, sir.”

“Yes, yes, the blue one. Try this on him, see how he goes.”

“Right away, sir.”

Then, burning like never before.

* * *

Bruce found Dick two weeks later. He had apparently been left in a dark alleyway, probably thrown out onto the street, judging by the gashes on the sides of his body. He was completely naked, without even his mask.That made it much easier to see exactly what they had done to him.

Bruce wouldn’t have even been here tonight had it not been for rumours that had reached Oracle about a potential Killer Croc sighting in the sewers. This was one of the main openings, the place where maintenance workers entered through about once a month. All logic pointed to the fact that it _should’ve_ been pretty clean, but instead, it stunk worse than the inside.

Bruce would know – he had been in there enough times.

It wasn’t easy to spot Dick’s crumpled form in the alley. He hadn’t moved from the centre where he’d been deposited. There was a dumpster beside him, cardboard boxes littering the ground and rotten food absolutely everywhere. Flies covered the area. Dick hadn’t stirred in the slightest.

Bruce hadn’t recognised him when he’d first spotted him there, but it was the lack of clothes that had made him jump down – clearly, this wasn’t the usual homeless person.

He doubted that he’d ever forget the moment he’d gotten closer and realised it was Dick, who’d been missing for a fortnight.

The first thing Bruce had done was call the Batmobile to him. The little screen on his gauntlet indicated that it would take seven minutes for it to arrive. The next thing Bruce did was take off his cape and wrap it around Dick’s body.

It was about the middle of autumn, and a warmer day at that, but that didn’t mean it was suitable to be entirely unclothed. And who knew what they’d done to Dick. Bruce still didn’t know who’d taken him.

Dick hadn’t stirred when the cape had covered his body – that was another thing that had alarmed Bruce. The third thing he did was scan Dick using the heat camera in his cowl.

There had been strange fluctuations in his body temperature, almost as though he wasn’t a human. The cowl was still unsure about what he was – at the time, it’d considered him to be a lizard, perhaps? Bruce had placed his hand on Dick’s neck to check his heartbeat, and sure enough, it was much higher than the average human’s. His body was pumping blood through it much too fast; surely it couldn’t keep this up in the long run without failing.

That had been when the Batmobile arrived.

* * *

It’d been three days since then, and Dick still hadn’t woken up. So far, Bruce had tried everything he could think of, from brain scans to blood transfusions – cycling Dick’s blood out of him and cleansing it, in an effort to remove whatever they’d clearly injected him with.

There were track marks all over the insides of his elbows. Though they hadn’t touched the facial hair that had grown since they’d kidnapped Dick, there was a part of his head that had been shaved. Bruce… Bruce would happily face the indignation Dick would no doubt express vehemently, if that meant that he’d wake up.

Alfred had suggested moving Dick upstairs, if his current condition stayed stable. Bruce had reluctantly agreed, and so began the arduous task of shifting all the medical equipment into Dick’s bedroom.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says sharply. “Which arm did you insert the IV in?”

Bruce glanced up. “His left,” he said. “Why?” He was over beside Alfred in an instant.

Alfred responded by carefully holding up Dick’s arm for Bruce to see. Bruce peered down, squinting slightly, and then his eyes widened. He ran a finger gently over the skin to make sure.

“There’s nothing,” he said. Even the track marks that he’d had before were gone. “Are his other scars gone, too?”

Alfred lifted up the side of the paper gown they’d slipped onto Dick, not wanting to put him in clothes that would aggravate any of the wounds he had. Even from where Bruce stood, he could see that Dick’s skin was completely free of the road burn it had had when he’d found him.

And that was when things began going wrong.

The heart monitor detected a change in Dick’s heartbeat three seconds before Dick’s eyes shot wide open and he jerked away, falling off the side of the bed.

Bruce and Alfred darted around instantly, but Dick’s breathing picked up pace at the sight of them. The whites of his eyes were massive, and his face showed fear so starkly that Bruce felt it like a physical wound.

“Wait,” he said to Alfred, drawing a hand in front of the older man to stop him from going any further. “Let’s… he’s afraid of us.”

“Bruce, he’s trailing _blood_.”

Bruce’s head whipped back around at that, and he drew in a sharp breath. The linen on the bed – once a light blue shade, with toy robots on it – now had a wide streak of blood, as though someone had dragged a paintbrush over it. The floorboards had the same. There were blood splatters around the base of the bed.

“Can we safely knock him out?” Bruce said in a hushed voice. He could see Dick’s face getting pasty, his eyes starting to develop a sheen to them.

Alfred hesitated, then went over to the medkit. Bruce didn’t want to inject Dick with anything more than what he already had running through his veins. He wished, not for the first time, that Barbara was still in Gotham, or that Tim wasn’t off world.

But there was nothing to be done about that now.

Bruce stepped closer towards Dick, raising his hands up and lowering himself to about the same level. “Dick,” he said softly. “Dick, it’s me. Bruce.”

Dick had frozen up against the wall. “B?” His mouth formed the words, but he didn’t make a sound.

Bruce nodded anyway. He resolutely didn’t look down at the pool of blood that was making the paper gown stick to Dick’s body in a grotesque red. He knew that they had no time to waste, especially if Dick was now bleeding from an unknown place, but there was nothing to be done – he could hear Alfred behind him, working to find medication that might have the least bad reaction with other chemicals they’d found in Dick’s system. He needed to keep Dick calm.

“It’s me, chum.” The old nickname slipped out as it always did, of its own volition. Bruce had grown out of the tiny heart attack at using it years ago, but it seemed that it had returned with even more of a vengeance ever since he and Dick had… come back together. “You’re safe, Dick. You’re not there anymore.”

Dick was beginning to blink at him, slowly unfurling from the little huddled ball he’d rolled himself up into in the corner beside the nightstand and the wall.

“Master Bruce—” Alfred entered Dick’s line of vision and it was like setting off a firework.

Dick scrambled to his feet and attempted to run in the opposite direction. His feet were bare and there’d been a certain amount of muscle atrophy; as Bruce watched, leaping up just a moment too slow, his feet skidded and slipped in the bloody trail he’d left behind and he hit the wall.

Dick let out a sound much like a wounded animal, and crumpled backwards. There was a bloody print on the wall where his back had hit it.

Bruce grabbed the syringe from Alfred’s shaking hand and wasted no time in plunging it into Dick’s upper arm. It’d been the right thing to do, but the look that Dick gave him would probably stay in his mind for a while to come.

Crouching down, Bruce tugged on Dick a little, to bring him forward and get a good look at his back.

His stomach turned. “Alfred,” Bruce called. “I… We’re going to need stitches—”

But then, before his eyes, the jagged cuts – deep and bloody and familiar in the way all textbook injuries to Bruce were familiar – began to _heal_ themselves. Alfred came around beside Bruce.

“Those are from whippings,” he murmured, one hand hovering over the rapidly healing gashes on Dick’s back.

Bruce nodded, eyes still focused on Dick’s back. It was now completely clear once again, any signs of injury gone. All that was left was the blood covering him – Bruce wondered whether that had been replaced with this regenerative process.

At that moment, Alfred plucked out a syringe and took it apart, ripping off the needle. He then scooped up some of the blood that had pooled out onto the hardwood floor, getting enough for a decent sample.

A nod to Bruce was all it took. Bruce knew that his place, right now, wasn’t at Dick’s bedside. He had to fix this, and Alfred had been level-headed enough to get him what was looking to be possibly one of the biggest tools he needed to solve this problem.

* * *

Three times Bruce tried to change the chemical composition of Dick’s blood, and three times Dick woke up and all his old, healed injuries reopened.

It was getting worse. It was almost as though this was bringing back older injuries, wounds that Bruce recognised. A scar that had been on the inside of Dick’s left arm now became the deep wound it had been when Dick had scraped it badly, falling out of a tree at sixteen. His eyes were now blackened, nose broken.

Then there were the injuries that Bruce had never known about, things that were either not mentioned in reports or Bruce had just… failed to read about them. Some were injuries that neither he nor Alfred knew about, judging by the sad furrow of the other man’s brow when Dick’s torso became riddled with bullets, his chest stabbed all the way through with what appeared to be a sword.

That one had made Bruce freeze in his tracks for what felt like an eternity, wondering when and how that could’ve possibly happened. How had he not known about that one?

Chemical burns. Acid on skin. Ripped fingernails. Rope burns. Dislocated shoulders and ripped tendons. And then, one of the worst memories that Bruce had: a bashed in skull and body, the result of a baseball bat.

Seeing all the injuries that Dick had received in his short life was… alarming, to say the least. Bruce didn’t know what to do.

* * *

“Test five,” Bruce murmured, giving the syringe an experimental flick with his fingers. “If this doesn’t work, Alfred…”

“Have faith, Master Bruce,” Alfred told him in as equally a hushed voice.

Bruce knew that there were countless things he could do, with regard to the science behind stopping this poison in Dick’s veins. He just didn’t know how much longer Dick’s body could sustain it – the temperature fluctuations were still raging through Dick’s body, and he didn’t know how much longer he could handle the massive blood loss. There would certainly come a time when the combined injuries would be too great for his body to hold on long enough.

Bruce injected it into Dick’s arm, gripping his hand tight before releasing it and stepping towards the medkit. He needed to be ready, in case this didn’t work.

Dick’s eyes fluttered a little, and then he frowned, letting out a pained grunt as he came to.

His gaze found Bruce. “B?” he said, just like he always said when he woke up, as though he couldn’t remember the previous times.

Bruce was beside him instantly. “Dick,” he said. “How do you feel?”

But his eyes were roaming across Dick’s forehead, where a long cut had shown up on the first trial, and on his torso, which was always awash in blood. There was nothing this time.

“Everything okay?” Dick rasped. He’d started off with his head slightly raised, looking towards Bruce and craning his neck to glance at Alfred, but now it’d fallen back down, as though he didn’t have the energy to hold it up.

Alfred quietly slipped out of the room for a moment, and Bruce knew that it was to collect himself. He’d probably return with a tea and perhaps a book. Bruce didn’t blame him; it’d been much too long since they’d had a breakthrough. 

Bruce felt something hot behind his eyes. They’d done it. They’d cured Dick.

“You’ve been…” He cleared his throat. “There’ve been complications with you. I’ll explain everything once we you get some of your strength back.”

Dick looked at him with big eyes, as though he could see how much of an understatement this was, but he nodded. “Tired,” he murmured.

“Rest,” Bruce told him instantly.

One of his hands found itself in Dick’s hair, stroking the strands. He’d become so accustomed to washing blood out of it that it felt strange to be doing this now, though it really shouldn’t be. When had their lives gotten to the point where bloody hair was more of a norm than sweat? Bruce… Bruce would try to change that. So many injuries that Dick shouldn’t have gotten, so many wounds he hadn’t been there for. So many near deaths.

Dick started coughing. The force of the coughs brought his body forward, curling in on itself.

And then came the blood.

It first erupted out of Dick’s body as bloody phlegm, spraying out onto the sheets in like an abstract painting, and then the whip wounds on his back reopened. Blood poured out immediately, covering both Dick and the bed with red.

Bruce raced towards the kit that lay open just two metres away. His hands were clumsy and big, and slow, always too slow. He could hear himself breathing loudly, something that Dick didn’t have the luxury of doing, and it was all Bruce’s fault—

Bruce turned, syringe in hand, to see Dick’s body slumped over. His footsteps seemed to slip and slide, the distance from the small sidetable to Dick’s bed taking an eternity to cover. Even Batman couldn’t stop the tremors in his hand as he injected the clear contents directly into Dick’s veins, but no, no, that wasn’t right.

Dick was _unconscious_ – surely he should be healing the moment he’d fallen into unconsciousness?

The reverse serum should only take a second to start showing results, but as Bruce watched in horror, the blood continued to seep out of Dick’s body.

“Alfred!” Bruce yelled, his voice coming out unhinged. He almost didn’t recognise himself. “ _Alfred!”_

Bruce’s hands shakily turned Dick around. The deep, deep gashes were still there, as raw and bloody as they’d been when they’d been first delivered. His back was riddled with exit holes from bullets, too, and knife marks. The stab wound that had gone all the way through was there, blatant as ever.

Bruce’s hand shakily pressed down to just beneath Dick’s jaw, where his pulse should be. Alfred ran into the room just in time to see Bruce staggering away, hands bloody and a look of absolute horror on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Lol. No sequel this time. I've been toying with the idea of killing Dick off for this Whole Month and I guess it's fitting that it happens on the last day?
> 
> Thank you for reading <3<3<3


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